


First Contact

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [54]
Category: Night World - L. J. Smith, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 07:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8704042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Rodney McKay + Any villain, They'll find that Rodney isn't quite as easy to dispose of as they imagined." AU version of First Contact. Alien intruders come to Atlantis. Rodney finally gets the hang of his magic.





	

John hated Delos, that much was evident. Every time Delos was around, John hovered right behind Rodney, quivering with energy. Delos wasn’t a threat, though. He was there at Rodney’s behest, to try to convince John that Lorne really wasn’t the devil incarnate, Godzilla to Atlantis’s Tokyo.  
  
Daniel had to know what Delos was, but he had the irritating ability to be completely oblivious to the way John was hyperfocused on Delos, one hand hovering near the pistol in his thigh holster, just waiting for Delos to give him an excuse. While John was a soldier and Delos was not, Delos had spent his entire life as a vampire (was _born a vampire_ ), and John had ceased being a vampire full-time when he was fourteen. In a battle between two vampires, Delos had an edge.  
  
But he had assumed the role of a scholar well. In Janus’s newly-discovered lab, Delos stuck close to Daniel, helping him translate anything he read. He wasn’t twitchy, the way a lot of soldiers were, and he didn’t carry a sidearm, though he was gate-rated. He didn’t have eyes like John did, despite everyone calling John’s eyes _Redfern eyes_. Delos’s eyes were golden-bright and just a little bit haunting. He wasn’t a soldier, but he was a predator. Was aware of his surroundings. Noticed things. Focused on them.  
  
Rodney hoped that the four of them working on this Janus project together would prove fruitful. They could be a bit of a team, learn to trust each other. Talk to each other. Respect each other. And maybe John would be willing to listen.  
  
Teyla’s voice crackled on the radio. “Rodney?”  
  
Rodney kept tapping at the console, hoping and praying to find a decryption key. “Yes?” Janus’s encryption and encoding of his research would have made even the most paranoid of NSA agents weep with envy. Some codes were based on Ancient knowledge puzzles, others were insanely complex math ciphers. Luckily for the IOA and Atlantis (and Rodney), Daniel Jackson was an expert in Ancient language and culture and history, Delos was an excellent translator, and John was a genius mathematician. Having all of John’s mathematical skills on demand had been so useful in the lab the past few months. Rodney wasn’t sure how conscious John was of it, but the way he furrowed his brow and pursed his lips when he was puzzling over something was downright adorable, and that light in his eyes when he made a breakthrough was just _hot_.  
  
In fact, John was making that thoughtful pout now, standing on the other side of Daniel from Delos while the three of them poked at yet another puzzle.  
  
The four of them had been in Janus’s lab literally all night, had worked straight through till the New Lantean dawn and would probably bleed coffee. There had been some sniping between Rodney and Daniel, and frosty silence between John and Delos, but they’d worked well together. Rodney had hopes for his plan.  
  
Teyla spoke again. “Rodney, you must leave the lab immediately.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
Delos and John spun around at the same time, and the change came over them. John’s eyes flared silver, and he drew his pistol. Delos slid into a martial arts stance. His eyes were also blazing silver, and he hissed, baring his fangs.  
  
Daniel blinked. “Whoa -”  
  
The door blew open.  
  
Rodney found himself on his back behind one of the consoles, John crouched beside him.  
  
Daniel and Delos were nowhere to be seen, but Rodney knew the ringing sound and ozone scent of alien blaster weapon fire.  
  
“They’re taking a device!” Daniel shouted, and then John was gone.  
  
He cleared the console in a single leap, and Roney had seen superhuman feats by people he’d assumed were human, like Ronon and Lorne and sometimes even John, but that was -  
  
There was more blaster fire, some grunts and cries, impacts and banging. Rodney curled up in a little ball, terrified, and tapped his radio.  
  
“Teyla! Teyla, someone’s attacking Janus’s lab!”  
  
“We are outside with Major Teldy,” she said, “but we cannot enter, and our bullets do nothing to them. They are wearing some kind of armor suit, and their ship cut straight through the shield.”  
  
“Through the shield?” Rodney echoed. “Ancient ships are the only ones that can do that. Are they Ancient?”

“We do not know,” Teyla said, and there was gunfire in the background. “They entered Atlantis and came straight to this lab.”  
  
Maybe they were Ancients. Maybe they could decode Janus’s research.  
  
Rodney peeked up over the edge of the console.  
  
Delos and John were fighting side-by-side, circling the two suited figures. Were they Ancients in battle armor or were they robots? They were surrounded by a faint yellow glow, some kind of shield. Had they known Janus? There was no mention of battle armor in any Ancient database. Maybe they were wearing some of his tech?  
  
Delos and John moved together like they were born to it, two halves of the same coin as they circled the enemy, darted and feinted, dodged blaster fire.  
  
The intruders were targeting a specific piece of equipment that had a beeping red light on it, up on one of the consoles. Rodney couldn’t let them take it. If they’d gone to this much trouble to get it, it had to be important.  
  
Delos and John seemed to know what the intruders were after, were trying to herd them away from it.  
  
“We need to get the device they’re targeting,” Daniel said, and Rodney nearly had a heart attack.  
  
“I know,” Rodney said, and then, “what are you doing here?”  
  
“Delos rescued me from the blaster fire. I was on the other side. Crawled over here while the aliens were distracted.” Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose. “Which of us is faster? One of us should be an additional distraction while the other goes for the device.”  
  
“I’m younger than you,” Rodney said.  
  
“By three years,” Daniel said peevishly. “I’ve been on a gate team longer.”  
  
Rodney squinted at him. “Is everything a competition with _you?_ ”  
  
He and Daniel both flinched when Delos attempted to grapple with one of the intruders and was shoved backward roughly.  
  
Daniel narrowed his eyes. “I bet that guy thought Delos should have moved more from the force of that push.”  
  
The intruders couldn’t shoot John and Delos - they were too fast. But John and Delos couldn’t get through the energy shield.  
  
“You’re probably faster than me,” Rodney said, “but not fast enough to dodge that weapon fire. You don’t have the Gene, do you?”  
  
“Do now,” Daniel said.  
  
“You took Beckett’s gene therapy?”  
  
“Merlin the Ancient downloaded his consciousness into my body. Left a few presents behind,” Daniel said.  
  
Rodney shuddered. He’d thought it was bad enough when Lucius Lavin was brainwashing him, but to have an entire other entity controlling his body?  
  
“Why?” Daniel asked.  
  
“Can you use magic?”  
  
“Never really tried.”  
  
Rodney had set Kurt on fire that one time. That had been accidental, but he and John had been meditating together and working on Rodney’s magic ever since they’d reached their compromise about John feeding only on Rodney.  
  
“Let me try something.”  
  
“They’re behind an energy shield,” Daniel pointed out.  
  
“Doesn’t matter.” At least, Rodney didn’t think so. He’d seen Carson heal people through the material of a hazmat suit, so magic wasn’t bound by conventional barriers.  
  
“Are you sure?” Daniel asked, but Rodney ignored him.  
  
Took a deep breath. Stretched out one hand toward the intruders. Hand gestures were irrelevant, Carson had once explained, but sometimes they helped a witch focus the direction of her energy. Or his.  
  
Delos swore in a language Rodney had never heard and jackrabbited back over the nearest console when one of the suits lit on fire.  
  
The shield dropped immediately, and John pounced.

There was more blaster fire, and John let out a pained cry, staggered back.  
  
“The device!” Daniel cried. He lunged for it.  
  
Rodney lit another suit on fire. It was working. It was working!  
  
There was a soft _plink_ , and Rodney heard something roll across the floor.  
  
John shouted, “Fire in the hole!”  
  
And the world exploded.

*

When Rodney came to, he was in the infirmary with John and Delos hovering over him anxiously.  
  
“Thank Isis,” John said. “You’re awake.”  
  
“What the hell happened?”  
  
“They got the device,” John said grimly.  
  
“Daniel?” Rodney craned his neck to peer around, but his head hurt too much.  
  
“Dr. Jackson is still unconscious,” Delos said, “but he is generally unharmed.”  
  
Rodney pushed himself into a sitting position. “We need to figure out what that device was and how they found it.”  
  
John put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, Rodney. You have a concussion. You need to rest.”  
  
“We need to -”  
  
John looked into Rodney’s eyes, and Rodney stilled.  
  
“I offered to give you some blood, to speed your healing,” Delos said. “But Cousin John refused. It makes more sense for me to give, as Cousin John is a soldier and needs to be at peak strength, but -”  
  
Rodney knew the expression in John’s eyes, the fear.  
  
“We managed to capture one of them,” John said quietly. “We can look into it later. For now -”  
  
“For now, Colonel Sheppard’s right. Rest,” Keller said firmly.  
  
Rodney nodded and let John guide him back down to his pillow.  
  
“You were brave,” John said softly, and Delos did an about-face, unsubtly giving them privacy.  
  
Keller glanced at John, then at Delos, clearly unsettled by both of them. “You’ll be back at a hundred per cent soon,” she said to Rodney, and walked away, ostensibly to check on Daniel.  
  
“You used your magic.” John curled his fingers through Rodney’s. “That was amazing. And those guys had no idea what hit them.”  
  
“Magic,” Rodney echoed. He’d done it. Used it willfully, deliberately. Controlled it. “I’ve never been as easy to dispose of as people imagine.”  
  
“You are neither easy nor disposable,” John said firmly, and then, for only Rodney to hear, _I love you._  
  
Rodney was pleased with his own bravery, cleverness, newfound skill, but he was also afraid. Of the device that had been stolen, and the technologically superior aliens who’d stolen it. Of himself. And John, going full-vampire without hesitation.  
  
One thing at a time. The vampire issue would always be there.  
  
First things first: the device.


End file.
